Debt ceiling deal reached, reopens government

Just hours before the country was set to go into default, the U.S. Congress approved a deal that would allow the country to pay its creditors and reopen the shuttered federal government.

Virginia Democratic Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine voted for the measure, which passed the Senate Wednesday on a vote of 81-18.

The House of Representatives began voting on the bill just after 10 p.m., and by 10:10 enough Republicans had voted for the measure to guarantee its passage. A final vote total was not available at press time.

The deal raises the $16.7 trillion debt limit to get the government through Feb. 7. It reopens the government through Jan. 15. That means gates at federal parks will swing open and thousands of furloughed workers will return to federal offices across the country and the region.

The shutdown hit Hampton Roads disproportionately because of the military installations and federal facilities that dot the region. By one estimate 25,800 federal workers in Hampton Roads had been furloughed and the shutdown was costing the region $6.3 million in income a day.

Rep. Scott Rigell, R-Virginia Beach, who represents parts of Newport News and Hampton, said earlier Wednesday that he planned to support the deal, which also assures back pay for the temporarily out-of-work government employees.

"This evening the House will vote on a bipartisan deal to reopen the government; lift the debt ceiling; secure back pay for furloughed federal workers; require a budget conference; and mandate income verification for those seeking health-insurance subsidies under the 'Unaffordable' Care Act," Rigell said. "Given the lack of a viable alternative at this moment, I will support this bill."

Rep. Robert C. "Bobby" Scott, D-Newport News, said he too would vote for the deal, though he said measurable damage has been done to the economy because conservative Republicans have used the budget and the debt ceiling as bargaining chips.

Scott pointed to a study commissioned by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation that says "the repeated cycle of lurching from crisis to crisis" has meant the loss of about 900,000 jobs. The reports looks at recent events including "sequestration, the government shutdown and brinksmanship over the debt ceiling."

"This catastrophe cost 900,000 jobs that didn't have to be lost," Scott said. He added he's not thrilled about the prospect of having another short window to negotiate a budget.

However, he said, "the only thing worse than a short-term debt ceiling increase is no debt ceiling increase at all."

"There will be nothing to gain by fooling with the full faith and credit of the United States," he said.

Reps. Rob Wittman, R-Westmoreland County, and Randy Forbes, R-Chesapeake, did not announce how they would vote.

Warner took to the floor of the Senate Wednesday to praise the bipartisan deal reached in the Senate but also to castigate lawmakers who led the country into a shutdown and brought it to the brink of default.

"I'd like some of the folks who advocated these tactics to come down and explain to a restaurant owner down in Hampton, Virginia — where the workforce at NASA Langley, 3,500-strong, was reduced through this furlough to seven people — how their tactics somehow improved the fortunes of that private-sector business," Warner said.

After the vote, Kaine said, "Thanks to the bipartisan efforts of my Senate colleagues, tens of thousands of furloughed workers in Virginia will be back on the job with certainty they will be paid back for the time they were unable to work due to the needless government shutdown."

Rigell, a car dealer who has bucked his party in the past, has been in the spotlight before and during the shutdown.

As an Oct. 1 shutdown loomed, Republicans passed several funding measures that would have kept government running while tacking on provisions hamstringing the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. Those provision made the bills dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Rigell was the lone Republican in the House to vote against one such measure defunding Obamacare. Though at the time that he said his objection was not related to the attempts to weaken Obamacare but rather to Congress' use of short-term funding measures instead of annual budgets.

Later Rigell was one of the first Republicans to call for a bill to reopen the federal government that did not contain separate provisions aimed at the health care law.

Rigell's district is the most competitive in Virginia in terms of its partisan breakdown, and it has seesawed between political parties in recent years. He has already drawn a Democratic challenge in 2014 from Suzanne Patrick, a retired Navy commander.